


With Gentle Curves and Tender Feelings

by Lauren (notalwaysweak)



Category: Baby-Sitters Club - Ann M. Martin
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-26
Updated: 2012-11-26
Packaged: 2017-11-19 14:24:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,899
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/574217
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notalwaysweak/pseuds/Lauren
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Claudia realizes she's not just boy-crazy after all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	With Gentle Curves and Tender Feelings

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Piscaria](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Piscaria/gifts).



> BSC characters do not belong to me and no money is being made from this work of fan fiction.

I had a secret, and it was kind of a pathetic one, I guess: I still wrote in the club notebook. Of course, it was more like my diary now than a whole club thing, and if the rest of the club saw some of the stuff I’d written in there (like the stuff about Jeff Schafer and Byron Pike dating that I promised Dawn I wouldn’t tell anyone about) then it would be really, _really_ awkward.

When I was about seventeen, when the club disbanded because we were getting too much schoolwork to do much sitting, I started writing really bad poetry. When Mom got sick and I thought I was going to lose her the way I lost Mimi, I told the notebook. When Janine first brought a guy home from college. When Janine first brought a _girl_ home from college. When Mary Anne and Logan split up halfway during our senior year at SHS and everyone thought it was for good. (It wasn’t.) 

I guess I should explain who I am. My name’s Claudia Kishi, I’m twenty-one, and the club notebook was like a journal of baby-sitting jobs for my group of friends who used to meet up in my room three times a week to take calls and eat junk food. These days I don’t eat so much junk food. Turns out your metabolism screws up if you really expect to live off Doritos and Ding Dongs. At least Stacey’s happy when she visits that there’s no temptation in her way. 

Speaking of temptation, that’s what I was writing about in the notebook. Temptation, who that day in our landscape class had been wearing a shorter skirt than usual so it barely showed under the overly long tie-dyed shirt that she used as a smock for painting. Temptation, who had really pretty legs. Temptation, and it wasn’t like I hadn’t noticed before, but I was terrified of saying anything in case she turned her artistic temperament on me and it all backfired. 

Temptation, whose name was Ashley Wyeth. 

I’d known Ashley almost as long as the other club members. The difference was that Kristy, Mary Anne, Stacey, Dawn, and Jessi and Mal were like sisters to me. I sure didn’t want to lick the back of any of their thighs to see if they were as satiny-smooth as they looked. (Well, maybe Dawn. Once or twice. She looked great in a bikini.) 

It was insane. Stacey and I had always been boy-crazy. Girls were friends, not girlfriends. But Janine was quietly happy with her girlfriend, and Charlotte Johanssen and Becca Ramsey had surprised everyone by going to the school dance together two years running in middle school (well, okay, maybe not everyone was surprised), and while Stoneybrook was never going to be the home to a gay pride festival, people were pretty accepting. I was sure the only reason Jeff and Byron weren’t more open about things was a) the long distance thing and b) Byron’s brothers. Oh, Nick ( _not_ Nicky any more) was okay – if a little disappointed that Charlotte didn’t like him back – but Adam and Jordan were out to prove themselves totally girl-crazy, and I knew from Byron (by way of Jeff, by way of Dawn) that they were starting to ask him questions. 

So after I finished writing in the notebook and stashed it under the bed (where, okay, there was one package of Twinkies) I went over to the Pikes’ place. 

Mal answered the door, looking frazzled and squinting one eye. “Claud? What’re you doing here?” 

“I came to talk to Byron about his still life painting,” I said glibly. I felt bad for lying to her, but Byron would come out when he was ready. “What’s wrong with your eye?” 

“I dropped a contact somewhere in the bathroom.” 

I helped her find her contact and then went into the triplets’ bedroom, which was crowded with junk. Byron was lying on his stomach on his bunk, staring at a bowl of fruit. At least he was alone and actually getting his homework done, by the look of it. 

“Claudia? What’re you doing here?” He sat up so fast he almost cracked his head on the bunk overhead. 

“Chill out. I’m here to talk to you about something as a friend, not as your ex-babysitter.” 

“Oh, okay, sure.” He was a lot more relaxed than some of my former charges, who found it kind of embarrassing to talk normally to anyone who’d seen them throw a tantrum, fight with their siblings, eat crayons, or, in Laura Perkins’ case, pee their diapers. He put away his sketchpad and pencils and absently started chewing on the apple from his display. “What’s up?” 

I sat down on the bunk across from him. “Byron, Dawn told me about you and Jeff.”

His eyes went wide. “Hold it.” He jumped up and shut the door before sitting back down, apple forgotten. “She _told_ you? What did she tell you?” 

“Just that you were kind of, you know, seeing each other.” 

He relaxed. A little. “Well, I guess you know it’s true. I can’t exactly deny it. And I won’t.” 

“I’m not mad at you, Byron. I just wanted to ask you some stuff. Not personal stuff,” I added hastily. “Just... when did you realize you liked guys instead of girls?” 

“I don’t know. I guess I was about fifteen. Jordan and Adam used to talk about girls all the time and I just never saw the appeal that they did.” 

“How did you and Jeff get together?” 

“We, uh. We just. Locker room showers.” Byron went red and I didn’t ask any more. “Then we figured out, you know, that we like-liked each other.” 

“How?” 

“I don’t know, Claudia, we just _did.”_  

“But do you think it was harder than if you’d realized you liked a girl?” 

“Whatever you’re really trying to say, it’s okay,” Byron said gently.

I took a deep breath and blurted out, “I think I like a girl and I have no idea to tell her.” 

Byron didn’t look particularly shocked. “You can probably get away with just telling her, if she’s one of the club. You guys all care about each other too much for it to screw things up.” 

“She’s not a club member.” 

“Oh, thank God. It’s weird enough talking to you like this without  knowing you’re fantasizing about, like, Dawn. Or my sister.” 

I didn’t tell him about the little crush I’d had on Dawn a while back. It was probably better if he didn’t know. 

* * *

I left the Pikes’ a little while later, after actually giving Byron some pointers on his work (with the door open, in a loud voice, just so Mal could hear what was going on), and headed home. 

There was a message on my answering machine when I got there. I wished for the thousandth time that I could afford a cell phone, and played it. 

“Hey, Claudia, it’s Ashley. If you’re free tomorrow afternoon, maybe we could meet for coffee and discuss our art.” Yes, she actually said it like that, and in a really serious tone, as well. “Call me.” 

I nearly broke a nail punching her number in. 

“Wyeth residence, Ashley speaking.”

“Ashley, it’s Claudia.” 

“Oh, hey. So, you want to do coffee tomorrow?” 

“Sure. Is two o’clock okay? I have a portrait class finishing at one-thirty.” 

“Sounds fine to me.” 

We agreed on a place and hung up, and then I reached under my bed. Not for the club notebook or the Twinkies, either. I kept other guilty pleasures there now I wasn’t just a kid any more.

* * *

Ashley was wearing another short skirt – this one denim with white lace ruffles hand-sewn around the hem to look like a petticoat peeking out – when we met up; we both ordered frappuccinos and walked to a nearby park to drink them. I couldn’t keep from watching her legs as she settled onto a sun-warmed rock and crossed her legs at the ankle, stretching out. 

“How’s your landscape coming along?” I asked, trying to sound normal as I sat beside her. 

“I think it’s missing something. A human element.” 

“I thought you liked things abstract.”

“I’m over the fire hydrant phase, Claudia.” She looked amused. 

“You know, I always wondered what you meant when you said you’d sculpt love with gentle curves and tender feelings,” I said. “I mean, what sort of curves were you thinking about?” 

“At the time? I think I was thinking about ice cream, actually,” Ashley admitted, nodding at the scoop of vanilla melting in her drink. 

I gulped down half my drink and then started stirring it with my straw to melt the chocolate ice cream in with the coffee. “And now?” 

“You’re not very subtle for an artist. You're all tell and no show.” 

“Ex _cuse_ me?” 

“You’ve been staring at my legs, you just asked me about _curves_ , and now you’re blushing. I may not be the greatest mathematician ever, but I can put two and two together.” 

I set my cup down. “So what do you get if you put two and two together?” 

“Well.” She put her own cup down and touched first her mouth, then mine, with a cool fingertip. “If it’s your two lips, and my two lips, I guess we get a kiss.” 

“And, um. Is that something you. Um.” 

Fortunately, she leaned in and shut me up. She tasted like coffee and vanilla and the sun, and her lips were warm despite the icy drink. Her tongue was cold when it flicked into my mouth, but I warmed it up with my own, and we clung together for a good few minutes. I was hoping nobody we knew would come by, but then she did something with the tip of her tongue against the roof of my mouth and I stopped caring about it. 

“Now,” she murmured when she pulled back, “it would be this.” She traced the line of my cheekbone with her thumb. “And this.” She licked along my bottom lip. “And this.” Her other hand came up and cupped my breast through the pink shell top I was wearing, and I felt the strangled noise I made in the back of my throat. 

“Do you want to go to my place and work on that sculpture?” I blurted out. “I don’t have any clay, but you could use a human canvas.” 

Her hand squeezed lightly, then trailed down my arm to entwine her fingers with mine. “Sounds like a worthy project to me.” 

We started walking back toward my place, hand in hand, drinks melting as we walked. Every time I looked at her she smiled and I smiled back, feeling a little dizzy. This was a lot different to how I’d ever felt with boys. I knew the club notebook had a lot of entries about boys in it, copied down from times when we went on vacation or camp; I was looking forward to seeing just what would be different with Ashley that I could write down. 

It was probably the first time in my life that I was looking forward to writing anything. 

But, as with everything else in the diary, I had to experience it first and, judging from the gleam in Ashley’s eyes, it was going to be an amazing experience.


End file.
